


intuition

by aubadechild



Series: ShuAke Confidant Week 2018 [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - No Personas (Persona Series), Fluff, Love at First Sight, M/M, One Night Stands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 00:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16465592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aubadechild/pseuds/aubadechild
Summary: Amamiya Ren can tell within an hour of meeting someone whether or not he’s romantically compatible with them.{ mini-fic written for Shuake Confidant Week 2018 Day Two. }





	intuition

**Author's Note:**

> Entirely self-indulgent (and, objectively: kind of Bad) AU where post-college Ren and Akechi meet each other at a bar and face very few issues and everything works out Pretty Nifty For Them, Actually. Oneshot that may or may not be expanded on at a later date? I planned for it to be a lot longer but I wrote it on an all-nighter so take that information and run with it. Or "read" with it, if you will. Or even if you won't... 
> 
> This fic can also be found on [Tumblr](https://aubadechild.tumblr.com/post/179599996054/intuition-shuake-week-day-two-teamwork), if you fancy that sort of thing.

Amamiya Ren can tell within an hour of meeting someone whether or not he’s romantically compatible with them.

It’s not an exact science, of course. It’s a matter of intuition. A matter of the heart, as it were. He knew with Ryuji, way back in high school. His first conversation with the blonde delinquent had been erratic, crass, and downright hilarious, and Ren had felt his chest light up like a field full of lightning bugs.

He hadn’t fallen in love right then; he wasn’t a child playing at love-at-first-sight. But part of him had known implicitly that at the very least he had the  _potential_  for it. And Ryuji must have felt the same, as they ended up dating off and on throughout a tumultuous three years. And it had been that way with Yusuke as well, the eccentric art student he’d surreptitiously swiped right on, and then most recently with Makoto; he had known it by her laugh.

Though he still remained in close contact with his previous paramours, he wasn’t  _with-_ with any of them anymore.

Because if he  _was_ , he wouldn’t be at the bar right now, scanning the after-work crowd in the vain hope that someone might catch his eye, or, less likely, that he might catch someone else’s.

He’s contemplating a second shot when he feels someone slide onto the stool beside him and hears a confident voice rise above the usual din to order a specific, obscure whiskey on the rocks. Ren might have found it amusing had the bartender not immediately understood the unusual request and returned moments later with a glass of beautiful pale gold liquor.

“Do you always do that?” he finds himself saying, still gazing into the empty space that now fills his own shotglass.

“Do what?” says the man, and Ren has no choice but to turn his heavy head to check out who he’s now officially conversing with.

He opens his mouth to reply but forces himself pause to catch his breath because  _he had not expected to have it knocked out of him_ ; it’s just that the man who deigned to sit next to him is so  _handsome_ , and truth be told, as of late Ren has felt so  _lonesome,_ and sometimes love is worth less than a pretty face to spend the night with.

“Um,” Ren struggles. “I was going to say, ‘know exactly what you want and how to ask for it?’”

To his unending surprise, his new seat mate laughs.

“If that’s a serious question then the answer is no, but if it’s a thinly-veiled attempt at a pick-up line then I commend your ingenuity.” He raises the glass as if to congratulate him, and Ren is mesmerized by the hypnotic motion of the man’s throat as he sips the pungent liquor. His hands, Ren notices, are gloved despite Tokyo’s rapid progression toward the peak of summer heat.

“Maybe it’s both,” Ren tells him earnestly. “I’m Amamiya. Amamiya Ren.”

He offers a hand, and after a tense second’s worth of hesitation the other man takes it.

“Akechi,” says the man. “Akechi Goro. A pleasure.”

“Oh, trust me. The pleasure is all mine.”

* * *

 

Amamiya Ren can tell within an hour of meeting someone whether or not he’s romantically compatible with them.

Tonight, in the back seat of a taxi with his palm resting gently on the inner part of a stranger’s thigh and a smile resting gently on his lips, he wonders vaguely how reliable that formula has proven itself to be, or if it’s merely the effect of that pesky bias known as creeping determinism. He supposes in this case only time will tell whether his hunch about love was right, but, then again, who’s to say they don’t part ways come sunrise only to dissolve back into their separate lives, never to see each other again? Ren rests his cheek against the window and watches heat lightning illuminate the abstract outlines of skyscrapers, content to let the night unfold and let tomorrow work things out for itself.

When they pull up at Akechi’s apartment building Ren almost laughs and asks if the driver got the wrong address, but the ease with which Akechi slides out of the car and pays for the cab fare forces him to hold his tongue. These are luxury apartments, a single square foot of which is approximately equal to two weeks of Ren’s humble barista salary. He leaves his jaw at the reception desk (which is very much a thing they have here) and follows Akechi past the concierge (a service which, in Ren’s opinion, seems entirely irrelevant in a building whose occupants are at the very least  _semi_ -permanent residents of the city, but who is a poor man to tell the rich what frivolities they should and shouldn’t waste their money on?), around a corner (even the  _corners_ are fancy) and into a small hallway where no fewer than three elevators welcome them with open doors.

“After you,” Akechi says with a polite gesture, and that’s when it hits, the realization that he is in the middle of something he hasn’t done since his desperate college years: leave a bar with a stranger for the sole purpose of fucking them.

 _Ding,_ goes the elevator, and they’re on the twenty-ninth floor.

“They make you press your own buttons around here?” Ren jokes, but Akechi just shakes his head.

“There aren’t any attendants scheduled past ten o’clock,” he says. Ren smiles through gritted teeth.

Akechi leads the way across the short distance from the elevator to his apartment, and here it is, the awkward moment of silence while he fumbles with his keys (or in this case, in a stunning, technologically-advanced turn of events, a keycard) until the door finally decides to release them from the strange and unavoidable tension of unlocking it.

Now Ren’s peering into the dark of a stranger’s stainless-steeled, granite-countertopped kitchen, and he can see the glitter of the city lights through a massive picture window in the distance. And he wonders when his body became so uncomfortable speaking the language of one-night stands. He hovers on the stoop, unwilling to take the final step because once that door closes he’s in it, there’s no going back from that.

But then Akechi flicks on the lights and the modern furnishings of his minimalist-dream apartment come to life under a warm glow and Ren all but locks the door and throws away the keys himself.

“Well,” Akechi says, picking at an invisible thread on his shirt, “welcome to my home.”

“You probably get this a lot,” Ren says, slipping out of his boots, “but you’ve got a really nice place.”

Akechi smiles. “I… actually don’t have visitors all that often,” he admits. “That is to say, you’re the first person I’ve had over in”—he pauses, thinking, and Ren can track the trajectory of his host’s embarrassment as it dawns across his features—“well, in awhile. Feel free to make yourself at home. If you don’t mind, I’d like to shower…”

 _Make a move now or don’t make one at all,_ Ren tells himself firmly.  _And you’ve already come this far, so don’t chicken out. What, did you lose all your guts when you became a Real Adult and got too tired to sleep your way around town? This is the perfect chance to prove to yourself that you still got it._

“What a coincidence. I’d like one, too. I guess we really  _do_ have a lot in common.”

“I’ll leave some hot water for you,” Akechi says.

“Er,” Ren stutters, “that was kind of a hint, there. Like a ‘let’s shower together’ without me outright asking you if we could shower together. In case that was—“

“Oh, I know.” Akechi reaches up to untie his hair from its ponytail and shakes it out a few times. “And I’m saying  _you can go after me._ ”

With that he leaves, and the water starts soon after, and Ren brainstorms new ways to crawl out of his own skin. But before Ren can finish weighing the morality of ruining the inoffensive grey sofa that looks as though it has never before borne the weight of a human body against the fact that he’s been on his feet at work all day and will be tomorrow, too, the water stops and Akechi comes to tell him it’s his turn.

Ren showers. Years of his life wash down the drain under the gentle yet steady pressure of the luxury showerhead. When he’s done he’s almost ready to pass out then and there but refrains, out of respect.

He finds Akechi lounging in bed, drowning in an oversized bathrobe, and a towel twisted into his hair, and in the split second between Ren seeing him and Akechi noticing Ren seeing him, Ren concocts a strange imagined scenario where they’ve been married ten years and he’s the doting husband about to flick the lights out and climb into bed beside his beloved after a long day of grinding at the office. This shatters as the color drains from Akechi’s face, as though Ren’s caught him in the middle of something mortifying. He quickly tugs the towel from his head and shoves it into the hamper sitting beside a sleek black dresser.

“I didn’t hear the water turn off,” Akechi offers by way of explanation for some unknown wrong.

Ren quirks an eyebrow and smiles. “If you’re worried about how you look, don’t be. I think casual is charming.”

Akechi settles back down and pats an empty spot on the comforter beside him. 

“And what’s this?” Ren laughs.

“Well,” Akechi says slowly, “I know exactly what I want, and this is me asking for it.”

Ren lowers himself onto the bed. The mattress is one of those memory foam ones, which in and of itself is enough to get him drooling. He reaches up to cup Akechi’s chin, to smooth a thumb over the soft skin of his cheek. Then he leans in to kiss him like a question:  _remind me, is this what you meant when you said you know what you want? It is, isn’t it?_

And Akechi kisses back.  _Yes, it is. It is._

Amamiya Ren can tell within an hour of meeting someone whether or not he’s romantically compatible with them.

And sometimes, before that hour is up, he’s already fallen in love.


End file.
